Nina

'Exclusive to Limited Edition Vinyl EP' it says on the cover, and yes, it is omitted from the Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited-cd: Nina Persson & Nathan Larson's coverversion of Serge Gainsbourg's Sorry Angel, re-titled Angel's Fall. Slow, brooding, but not much better than Franz Ferdinand & Jane Birkin's version of the same song that did land on the Gainsbourg-tribute. Still, if you want your collection of Serge-interpretations complete, you have to hear it. Yes, Nina is best known as frontwoman of The Cardigans, Nathan is her husband and former member of rockband Shudder to Think. If this Nathan is the same guy (I bet he is), he's currently part of Hot One.

Nina Persson & Nathan Larson - Angel's Fall

Françoise

FS-regular Gryphon combined Michel Legrand (mentioned in the Nana Mouskouri-post below) and Project Cinema, with a posting about Françoise Dorléac. Or is it?

Ever heard of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort? That was a 1967 movie by Jacques Demy, music provided by Michel Legrand. In fact, it's a musical romantic comedy featuring Catherine Deneuve in one of her cutest performances on screen (and God knows there have been quite a lot of cute performances...). It also features Françoise Dorléac (on the right of the picture, with dark hair), who happened to be Catherines older sister in real life and twin sister in the movie; she tragically died in a car crash some time later.
There's a lot of singing in the movie, BUT... with the exception of Danielle Darrieux, it's not the actors actual singing voice; instead some professional singers were hired and the actors were miming (Catherine's voice is Anne Germain, Françoise's voice is Claude Parent - never heard of them after that, I must admit).
Here's two songs from the movie: the famous La chanson des jumelles , second a song mimed by Catherine, De Delphine à Lancien complaining about her actual lover, whom she will dump later on....

La Chanson des Jumelles
Delphine á Lancien

Nana

No, I don't think she's goodlooking either. But Nana Mouskouri (or should I say Νάνας Μούσχουρη) díd sing a beautiful song by Serge. Mouskouri, best known I guess for the theme-song to the tv-series Mistral's Daughter, made an enormous string of albums, and is currently on her farewell tour. Not a minute too soon, that farewell-saying - I saw her a few weeks back on a Dutch tv-show, where she sang as offkey as a crow with throatcancer.
Les Yeux Pour Pleures is taken from the 4-cd box Mister Melody, that features a whole bunch of Gainsbourg-covers and -written songs. I'm still waiting for Amazon.de to finally send me the box, but in the meantime here's that Nana song, and also from that box a nice yeye-style ditty by Bardot - which concludes by the way Project Cinema.

Nana Mouskouri - Les Yeux Pour Pleurer
Brigitte Bardot - L'Appareil à Sous

NEW: Nana Mouskouri & Michel Legrand - Quand on s'Aime

Nouvelle Vague

How many times can you tell the same joke? A question that popped up while listening to Bande á Part, the new album by Nouvelle Vague (out June 13). Just like on the first album, masterminds Olivier Libeaux and Marc Collin chose a string of new wave covers, re-arranged them as breezy, latin-tinged hammock-swingers and picked a few husky young (mostly French) females to sing the covers. Sounds like a great day job to me, and the bossanova-vibe from the first album has been replaced for a darker, gothic-voodoo-atmosphere, but it's basically still the same idea repackaged. And with copycats like Eldissa (who got bossanova on disco-hits) and the Bossa N' Stones-series (Bossa N' Marley, Jazz N' 80's, etc), it's hard to come up with something original. Sill, some of the repackinging came out nice (Echo's The Killing Moon, Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen in Love, Visage's Fade to Grey, sung by the pictured Marina and described by Collin as "a blind young girl singing in the corridors of the Parisian Metro, ignored by everyone"), but they should stop here. Or do a Smiths N' Bossa-tribute, closing with That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore.

Nouvelle Vague - Fade To Grey

The reason I'm posting Fade To Grey is, ofcourse, because the song is partly in French. Japanese twosome Konki Duet also recorded a version of the Visage-hit, with more French lyrics added:

The Konki Duet - Il Fait Tous Gris

Filles on the radio

Rock Fort is the name of a new show on London arts radio station Resonance FM, 104.4 FM. This Friday (May 5, 3.30pm to 4.30pm UK time) the show will be totally devoted to French female singers. Presenter David promised to mention this blog! Listen online here.

Project Cinema (12): Geneviève

Guestpost-time again! Here's Natasha-la-la, with a post on Geneviève Grad:

At first glance Geneviève Grad seems to be just another blonde actress who "was a bit of a singer", as the French politely put it when singing is not someone’s strong suit. But unlike many other actresses who recorded songs despite their audible lack of talent, Grad actually has vibrato in her voice and stays on key. Born in Paris in 1944, she is best know for her role as Nicole Cruchot in movies such as the 1964 film Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez and a year later

Le Gendarme à New York, both starring French funny man, Louis de Funès playing her father, police officer Cruchot. Until 1982 Grad starred in about 15 films, including another ‘Gendarme’ film Le Gendarme se marie and has long retired from the spotlight.

Her claim to fame as a singer is no doubt the catchy twist number from the ‘Saint-Tropez’ film entitled Douliou Douliou Saint-Tropez, which was also notably covered by Québec yé-yé singer, Jenny Rock. For those of you who can’t find ‘douliou douliou’ in a French dictionary, it’s a bastardization of ‘do you do you’. In an interview, composer Raymond Lefèvre had this to say about the hit song: "We wrote this song before shooting the film because it was to be used as a playback number on the set. The rest of the music had to be composed during the summer, right in the middle of August. I had just bought a summer home in the country and I didn’t want to leave there. And then finding musicians in Paris in the middle of summer was next to impossible. Then the next year with Le Gendarme à New York, same problem: composing music in the middle of summer..."

As for the song Les garçons sont gentils from New York, it is as naïve as it gets. Feel free to sing along: "When I’m away far from my home, they do everything to please me, whether it’s John or Pierre, boys are nice to me." I’ll bet they are.


Geneviève Grad – Douliou douliou Saint-Tropez

Geneviève Grad – Les garçons sont gentils

Initals SG: Special Report

Last Friday, singers like Helena Noguerra, Anna Karina, Keren Ann and some bald guy were paying tribute to Serge Gainsbourg at the Printemps de Bourges-festival. FS-special reporter Jan Hiddink was there to report. His ears are still bleeding.

Read his report here.